Concert Review: What we learned at the Heavy T.O. festival

Concert Review: Heavy T.O. at Downsview Park, Toronto

I have seen fully clothed men and women wrestle each other to the ground on a once-green field turned to an ocean of squelching brown muck. I have watched a 60-year-old man in Dockers and a sensible shirt smoke a triumphant cigar as Marilyn Manson takes the stage a few hundred metres away. I have seen Marilyn Manson himself from much closer, in the wild, and can confirm he was not, at that moment, having sex with Lana Del Rey. I have shared a port-a-potty with a member of Cannibal Corpse (probably). I have heard bands play heavy metal, death metal, deathcore and metalcore, and can explain to you the differences. I have seen mud thrown, smeared, jumped in and inadvertently ingested. I have smelled the sweet burning of hundreds and hundreds of joints and been offered hits from none, presumably because I look like a dumb narc. I have had my manhood and sexuality questioned for wearing a messenger bag and not a backpack. I have seen nightmarish homemade Slipknot masks fashioned out of women’s nylons and splashed with fake blood.

I just spent the weekend at Heavy T.O., a two-day festival of hard rock, metal, wrestling and Jagermeister at Toronto’s Downsview Park. This is what I saw.

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Unexpected precision: Planning a festival is more science than art, so compliments to the organizers for plotting out two days that seemingly hit every scheduled mark despite the best efforts of a vengeful Mother Nature. The West and East stages were set up side-by-side with strategically placed barriers on the ground to prevent an uncontrollable flow of slick humanity from pitching too precariously to one side or the other, with bands scheduled to pick up on one stage moments after their neighbours on the other finished theirs. The system actually worked, so if anybody entered the grounds concerned that they were not, in fact, going to have their faces melted for more than 10 consecutive hours a day, they were quickly disabused of those fears.

Moisture, in general: Toronto’s own Cancer Bats played a high-energy homecoming set early on Saturday, kicking off with a cover of the Beastie Boys’ Sabotage in the midst of what would go on to be almost an entire day of cold, punishing rain. I went to walk over to the West stage to get a better look, but realized the path was blocked by a pit of mud that had become a platform for attendees to demonstrate amateur acrobatics and also to just generally grapple with one another and make a mess of themselves. I walked back over to my spot by the East stage, the ground becoming more treacherous with every step, as Cancer Bats frontman Liam Cormier commended the crowd on its hearty approach to the inclement weather. “Rain or shine, y’all don’t care!” he yelled as I safely positioned myself on the sturdiest island of wood chips I could find. I am very brave.

Fashion trend that made me feel hopelessly out of touch: This was difficult to narrow down, considering I usually dress like I’ve just robbed a Banana Republic, but the prize goes to easily the most ubiquitous clothing item of the weekend, the “Smoke Meth & Hail Satan (inverted cross)” T-shirt, spotted no fewer than 15 times by Saturday’s end. Chic, affordable and, above all else, just plain old good advice. Other fashion notes:

– First luchador mask sighting: 2:37 p.m. on Saturday.

– Three friends walked by at one point wearing three different Lamb of God T-shirts (free Randy!). That had to have been coordinated, right? Like, they all called each other that morning to make sure they didn’t wear the same Lamb of God T-shirt to the heavy metal festival that afternoon?

– I would trade a millenium of meteor showers just to see the world’s most sullen six-and-a-half-foot tall goth guy wearing a bright white Trollface T-shirt underneath his floor-length leather duster again.

Most awkward moshing: The highly technical Dillinger Escape Plan carried the great distinction of being one of the few bands on Saturday’s bill whose albums I actually own (sure they’re very excited to hear that). A mix of hardcore, spacey rock interludes, complex polyrhythms and unpredictable time signatures, DEP put on a thrilling live show, with jacked, screaming frontman Greg Puciato hurling himself around the stage and into the crowd with little regard for his own well-being (though with a strict adherence to normal bathroom protocol). But as the band blazed through tracks such as Farewell, Mona Lisa, Gold Teeth on a Bum and Sunshine the Werewolf, those wishing to head-bang in standard 4/4 bliss may have found themselves out of rhythm with those ever-changing shifts in time (17/8 is a recipe for whiplash, friends). Puciato smartly found a way around the issue, though, exhorting those up front to just get a circle pit going instead. Always thinking, those math-rock guys.

Most delightfully overcooked stage banter: New Jersey thrash-metal band Overkill’s singer Bobby “Blitz” Ellsworth looks like Iggy Pop’s stunt-corpse and sings in a grating, screechy, squealy, Mustainey howl. He’s also been performing since the early ’80s and has survived nose cancer (!) and an on-stage stroke, so my intention is not to poop on the guy for doing his thing. But, if you want to hear borderline incoherent stage chatter derived almost exclusively from song and album titles and city-name-taped-to-the-back-of-the-guitar platitudes, then Bobby Blitz is your man. Some examples:

– “WELCOME TO THE ELECTRIC AGE, T.O.!” Were … were we not already there?

– “LET’S LET THOSE MOTHERF–KERS OUTSIDE THOSE FENCES KNOW THAT TOGETHER WE ARE IRONBOUND!” As you wish, Your Grace.

– “MERCI!” (crowd boos because, ha ha, we do not speak French here in Toronto, you big dummy) “OH? WHEN’S THE LAST TIME YOU HAD YOUR ASS KICKED BY AN OLD MAN?” An old man who had a stroke on stage while singing a song called Necroshine, no less.

Great band names: Including, but not limited to: Fleshgod Apocalypse, Goatwhore, Trivium, In Flames, Job for a Cowboy and The Faceless. I am naming my first son Goatwhore. Maybe my second, too.

A refreshing lack of nostalgia: Metal festivals like Heavy T.O. exist in their own ecosystem. There are no buzz bands, no summer jamz, no top-dollar reunion tours. They aren’t institutions like Lollapalooza, get-there events like Coachella or even amorphous freak-out orgies like the Gathering of the Juggalos. They don’t traffic in the past, because the notion of the past is largely irrelevant in this context. When Suicidal Tendencies singer/founder (and lone permanent member) Mike Muir tells stories about the band playing punk shows back in L.A. at a club across from a police station and getting into fights with cops after concerts, there’s no winking irony that his current bandmates were years away from becoming members during the fisticuffs. The fact that Muir’s song War Inside My Head is 25 years old doesn’t matter; the fact that this group is playing it now does. Writing at Grantland recently, Steven Hyden quoted Billy Corgan (of all people) talking about the “‘virtual reality perpetuity’ of music culture engendered by the Internet” — i.e., that a 15-year-old kid discovering a 25-year-old song can dive into that band’s history and discography as if it was just as vital today as in the ’80s. And when that kid can then go haul ass around a circle pit to the tune of that 25-year-old song in a context-free environment like Heavy T.O., who’s to tell them otherwise?

No ordinary love: Just before Marilyn Manson’s Saturday-night set, a young bald man walking with his girlfriend stopped at a mud pile a few metres in front of me, pointing first at the mud and then at his face. Not missing a beat, the girl bent over, reached into the bog and came up with a couple brown fingers she then used to draw an inverted cross on his forehead. Satisfied with her handiwork, they moved merrily along their way.

Most egregious encore call: Marilyn Manson was given an hour to play within the confines of Heavy T.O.’s famously tight scheduling, and what does he do with his 8 p.m. starting time? After a late-set rendition of Antichrist Superstar, complete with thunderbolt podium and his best page-tearin’ Bible, Manson and co. left the stage for a few minutes. The crowd dutifully chanted and, if they were anything like I am, looked at their phones and realized it was only 8:50 p.m. Who gives themselves an encore break during a one-hour festival set? If you can’t expect proper etiquette from Marilyn Manson, then who?

Manson did return for a finale of The Beautiful People, though, a fun reminder of his tortured, twisted pop star days after a set that had him planted firmly in gaudy rock-star mode. Running through arena-ready staples like Disposable Teens, The Dope Show and Rock is Dead, Manson relegated the religion-bashing that once made him a public enemy to lazy between-song pillow talk, seeming more interested in shooting a smoke hose at the crowd than expounding on Anton LaVey. Still, he’s not light on charisma: Though the music itself carries a charge, Manson’s lyrics haven’t aged particularly well, and yet he manages to sell the hell out of them. And, ever mindful of CanCon rules, he even spilled the beans on his rumoured dalliance (or lack thereof) with Avril Lavigne: “When I said I didn’t f–k Avril because she was Canadian, I meant I did do it and didn’t want to admit it because she was Canadian. And I forgive you.” Charisma!

The highest high and the lowest low: Both courtesy of the pride of Buffalo, Cannibal Corpse! The infamously, unapologetically violent death metal band’s dizzyingly incoherent Sunday afternoon set featured the two following monologues from rumbly frontman George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher, one being probably the funniest thing I heard all weekend and one … that was not:

– “I want you all out there banging your heads on this next one. Short hair’s no excuse! Try to keep up with me. You will fail, but try. This song is about shooting blood from your c–k.” I laughed.

– “Here’s a special dedication to all the women out there — let’s hear you. (light applause) That’s about 25 of you up front here. I know there are more in the stands and on the grass in the back like a bunch of lazy b-tches who didn’t want to come up here because they’re afraid of me. And you should be. I will f–k you up the a–. But that’s fine, stay where you are — I’ll find you later.” This seemed mildly problematic. Maybe I’m just getting soft in my old age.

Good bands: Great bands, even. The Deftones and System of a Down closed out the festival Sunday night with the best performances of the weekend, a pair of heavy, melodic offerings spanning impressively long careers marked by a willingness to evolve that is all too often absent in bands such as these.

(Actually, it’s incorrect to say they were the closers: In between their sets, a cynical marketing tool called Five Finger Death Punch played steakheaded bro-core for parts of an hour. Its members wore clothing bearing an energy drink company’s logo, and lead singer Ivan Moody wore a basketball jersey with “CAPITALIST” on the back — ostensibly a reference to the band’s latest album, American Capitalist, but very subtle and cool all the same. Also, there was a drum solo. Anyway.)

The Deftones ripped through old songs and new with similar tenacity, frontman Chino Moreno — dressed in decidedly un-metallic brown slacks, a dark V-neck sweater and sockless sneakers — hitting tough notes and laudably straining for others. Bouncing around the stage red-faced and screeching through tracks including Root, Seven Words, My Own Summer (Shove It) and more recent songs such as Diamond Eyes and the sharp Rocket Skates, the only clue that Moreno and the others have been at this for nearly 25 years is a slight paunch. Whereas their California cohorts Korn have warmly embraced dubstep and abandoned anything that once made them a compelling band, the Deftones have deftly played off their strengths (Moreno’s voice, solid songwriting, the ability to create atmosphere) rather than trying to shroud their weaknesses.

System of a Down, the night’s true headliners, hit the stage at 9 p.m. with a heavier-than-hell Prison Song, a track punctuated by singer Serj Tankian’s high-speed subliminal indictments of, yes, America’s justice system. Tankian’s vocals jump and drop and swoop, switching from a low growl to a high-pitched circus squeal as necessary while generally resting at a full and soulful operatic tenor in between. Needles and Deer Dance, selections from 2001’s Toxicity, followed shortly after, and the mood at Downsview Park lifted. After a weekend beset by rare sustained rain, unseasonable cold and revolting sludge, several thousand people were suddenly content to pogo in place, listening to one of America’s strangest bands swing gracefully from songs about ambiguous political-religious missions (Chop Suey!, possibly?) to the drug-addled ramblings of modern paranoiac (Sugar).

Festivals are dicey propositions — putting a huge group of people in the same space for an extended period of time because of a single unifying trait and expecting acceptance and compassion and cooperation? Why should a music festival be any different than the DMV or the grocery store or the highway? The pushers, the criers and the fall-down drunks will always find ways to screw up your day. But sometimes — even at a heavy metal festival — there are moments of transcendence, moments when everything else is blocked out and you yield to the music, hoping it’s enough to get people to be cool, stop throwing mud, listen to an Armenian man sing about removing a tapeworm and just dance.